Monday, June 30, 2014

Where is the Summer Going?

Today is the last day of June and the month has been ending with a BANG!. Saturday was a rainy day and as we closed the shop and I sent Chickie out the door, it was beginning to rain again. By the time I had the cash drawer counted the rain was sheeting down and the wind was blowing it over my sill and down into my basement, right on top of my jewelry bench. This isn't unheard of - it has happened in the past. But it's a royal PITA when it does happen because it floods the table top (any small items I might have been working on are washed away - so NOT good) and then pours onto the concrete floor, heading toward the furnace.

The water wasn't quite this bad, but it was pretty darned intense andled to some serious clean-up on my part. I'm a bit reluctant torestore the bench back to original right away, although I know that'sa bit silly of me.

I phoned DH and told him I would be an hour late, grabbed a bucket and mop, and started damage control. Every tool, bag of items and piece of metal had to be pulled off the bench, individual dried, and put somewhere else until the rain stopped. It took quite a while to get accomplished. I set up two buckets in case more gully-washer storms hit, but I guess that was the last hurrah because things calmed down afterward and Sunday was beautiful.

The keyboard suddenly wasn't responding at all. Thank goodnessthe mouse still worked or I would have been totally up the creek.

The other thing that happened as I was leaving on Saturday night was that one of my keyboards went dead. For a change it wasn't the specialized keyboard that we use for all of our register work. No, it was the keyboard that operates my main store database computer. Admittedly the keyboard is very old and is being used extensively every day, but I really didn't need this. I have put an extra keyboard from home into the back of Minion to take to the store today and I hope that it will be accepted by my old Win98 computer system at the shop. What a pain.

JCPenny is one of the anchor stores at Rosedale Mall. Although notthat popular (compared to other stores), I've always found clothesthere that I liked. This time it was DH's turn to shop, though.

But Sunday, as I mentioned above, was fabulous. DH and I woke up to a beautiful, sunny day. He decided he needed some new pants (which he desperately does) and wanted to go to JC Penny's and shop. Since they didn't open for an hour, we grabbed breakfast bagels at Bruegger's Bagels and then headed over to Rosedale to shop. More than an hour later DH had seven pairs of pants in a variety of cuts, fabrics and shades, two t-shirts, and I had a Minion t-shirt of my own. Several of the pants will need to be shortened, but some of them can be worn right away.

DH's new Sketcher shoes are quite similar to this style, but slightlymore polished with a distressed leather look. They're very sharp.

He also bought two pairs of sandals and a new pair of shoes ( some really sharp Sketchers) and I got a new pair of slippers. All in all, it was intensive shopping and a lot of fun. He rarely shops for clothes, so it was fun to see him seriously looking through things, trying them on and going back for other sizes/colors. I'm really happy with the shoes and hope that he starts wearing them soon. He has a tendency to keep new things sitting around unused for a while. Rather silly.

I really enjoy the "Endeavour" series portion of Masterpiece on PBS. Forthose who love "Inspector Lewis", "Endeavour" slides right into thatuniverse as Inspector Endeavour Morse learns the ropes of being apolice detective. I only get four episodes in this year's season, andI'm really looking forward to the rest of them.

Of course, not everything could be smooth sailing. He had grabbed the wrong size of one of the pants which required me to go back to the store and exchange it for a different pair. But that was pretty mild. We cut down some trees, cleaned the gutters around the house, and finally relaxed before a nice dinner followed by ice cream and watching "Endeavour" on PBS.

July 4th is a day I'm already looking forward to. We won't do anythingspecial, although we'll probably throw something onto the grill to cook, butit's an extra day off and we sorely need it.

The week ahead will be busy, but we'll have July 4 off to celebrate Independence Day so it will be a rather strange schedule for me. Of course, next week will make up for that when Chickie goes to Seattle for her vacation and I have to work multiple days in a row. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Have a happy Monday and cross your fingers that the replacement keyboard will work for my ancient shop computer.